


Life is...

by TururaJ



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Just a drabble, M/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TururaJ/pseuds/TururaJ
Summary: What is it that he wants truly?
Relationships: Kaizuka Inaho/Slaine Troyard
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	Life is...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperballoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperballoon/gifts).



> "Give me three words, I want to do a drabble", I said.  
> "Here you go", answered Paperballoon, "Key, longing, tranquility."  
> Moi is done! Thank you, Paper.
> 
> On the other note, nothing new and spectacular in the drabble here, but if anyone wants an inasure bite, just have a bite.

“So there’s no key to you?” Kaizuka asks, his question so ridiculous Slaine finds it hard not to blow up.

“Am I a door to open?” he snarls, curling his fingers over the table, nails biting his own skin. Kaizuka’s face is close - just barely a meter away, the table separating them, and the space seems so easy to jump. It can take him only a second to propel himself forward and feel how that irritating face would crumble under his direct punch. He stays put of course. He understands the consequences. The prison years have been long and tiring; he doesn’t want to add more negative things to his history. He takes a deep breath, “Listen. You’ve been trying for six years already. Isn’t it time to give up, Kaizuka? Just go your way, live your life and let me be!”

There’s a pause. A long foreboding pause and suddenly Slaine feels conflicted. What is it that he wants truly? Kaizuka finally gone? Or Kaizuka coming back? The absence of a definite answer brings a terror he does not comprehend. It forces him to curl his toes as if he needs to make deeper contact with the ground, to keep himself sitting upright when he hears the decisive words.

“No,” Kaizuka stands up, calm and collected, his quiet but strong voice erasing all traces of the frightening silence. “If I have yet to find a key then there is something that I lack. And the only right answer is to search for it further until I get the job done.”

“Obstinate, Kaizuka,” Slaine huffs, turns away, hides his eyes under his disarrayed hair. He does not move and keeps steep control over his breathing. There is no way he’ll allow Kaizuka to notice the overwhelming relief that surges through his body. He spits out the next words to distract them both, “What if you never find it?”

“I will.”

“Spare me some of your sureness, will you?” Slaine grumbles to Kaizuka’s back, but as the door closes and he is left alone, something strange roots deep inside his chest. A feeling so forceful Slaine is too scared to give it a name. He holds onto his father’s locket and counts the minutes away. His head is empty. Empty. And it should stay so until his body returns to earth to rot.

***

The key jingles on the chain. Slaine watches as Kaizuka unlocks the door. It creaks amiably, letting them inside. The house is new: it smells of wood and paint. The windows are all open, welcoming the warm summer breeze. Slaine stops in the living room, too caught up in the sound of waves rolling back and forth coming from the sea shore. The reality is too bright, a stark contrast from the broody atmosphere of his cell. He finds himself lost in the tranquility of the new future.

Life is wondrous sometimes. It throws you down, painfully slaps your back as you agonize in the dirt, unable to get up, and when you finally accept that that’s about all you can ever have, you are suddenly pulled up again to heights you could never imagine before, he thinks.

“Am I on the right track this time?” Kaizuka approaches him slowly; he must be sensing Slaine’s reluctance to end the miraculous moment. Slaine takes his time to answer as he leans over the windowsill to look at the proud palm trees. There are a lot of things he can say to Kaizuka, both good and bad, but he feels too serene to voice any of it. For now he wants to keep drowning in a world where his past and sins and anguish do not exist.

“For six years you have been kind to me. Though I’ve never asked for it…” A pair of gulls flies high in the air; Slaine admires their mighty wings. He squints, trying to see them better, trying to absorb the freedom of their flight into his very core. “You’ve once again stayed true to yourself.”

“I’ll take it as a ‘yes’,” Kaizuka concludes before disappearing in the kitchen.

Slaine turns to look at the empty hall, a small smile crawling onto his lips. It is the first one he ever directs at Kaizuka. Too bad the idiot can’t see it.

“So cocksure,” he huffs, jumps up to sit on the windowsill and stills.

The world is peaceful, sunny, harmonious, and at last he is a part of it.

*** 

He feels like he is a thief, but maybe he is, truly. Maybe his soul is rotten; maybe it had been birthed like this from the start. Maybe he was born to steal, to sin, to make mistakes in his life over and over again. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be happy. Maybe he’s going to ruin himself once more. Still, he doesn’t stop.

It’s been a year. Of living together with another human being, of shared breakfasts and dinners, of chatting over silly television programs, of quietly reading books in the company of another. A sacred year - worthier than the rest of his whole life.

His steps are shaky as he soundlessly opens the door to Kaizuka’s bedroom. He’s feverish from the dare, sick of the dread, stuck on the brink of panic. But there’s no way back. Not for someone like him. It’s all or nothing, all or nothing again - a gamble he doubts he is able to win.

Kaizuka is asleep, the thin blanket low on his hips. The dawn is minutes away, and the grey morning light opens a clear view of Kaizuka’s chest. Kaizuka’s shoulders aren’t as broad as Slaine’s but he’s perfectly fit, and all the alluring flats and muscles are open for him to see. Slaine crosses the bedroom in a daze, his eyes roaming Kaizuka’s raven hair, the way he rests his arm under the pillow, the outline of his legs under the blanket. Even his sewed left eye, the one that Slaine had destroyed long-long ago, is there for him to discover.

Slaine wants to take all of him, claim all of him: his kindness, his stability, his support, his care. He is a starving selfish beast, a thief with no right to be here. Yet, he steps forward and climbs the bed before Kaizuka wakes up, before Kaizuka has a chance to act. Kaizuka is warm and firm in all the right places. Slaine presses all of his weight against him, holds his hips with his legs, puts his hands over his shoulders, his fingers tingling from the sudden contact.

“Slaine?” Kaizuka’s voice is hoarse from sleep, but it forces a horde of greedy goosebumps run down Slaine’s back. It is the first time since the war Slaine hears Kaizuka saying his name. He wishes he could hear it every day. How would it feel to wake up near another person? Would there be a stray kiss, a light hug, a gentle touch? Would there be smiles or laughter or a playful fight? How does it feel - to share life with the one you have feelings for, absolutely free of shackles, of past, of misery?

“It’s your fault,” he says, desperation turning his voice choky. He grabs a patch of Kaizuka’s hair, his grip hard but careful, and makes Kaizuka look at him. “You are mine from today. I’m never letting you go.”

He is lying, a deceitful creature that he is. He is going to let go as soon as Kaizuka orders him so. There is no way he can answer with violence to all the kindness and human grace he had received from Kaizuka Inaho. All he is there for is a short moment before the painful rejection throws him to a new abyss of heartache. It is an extreme gamble, like most of things in his life are. He is a pitiful gambler, a gatherer of crumbs.

“I see,” Kaizuka blinks, and in a flash Slaine finds himself pressed into the bed, their positions switched entirely. “Then I can finally do this.”

Lips press into his neck, and Slaine feels hot. Hot all over, body burning up with the speed of light. Every part of him is screaming alive as Kaizuka moves his hands down his arms, his chest, his hips with an unfamiliar and unrestrained familiarity. Instead of falling into the abyss Slaine is suddenly flying over it, like a stately gull, hurrying back, back home.

“W-what are you doing, fool?” he manages to breathe out in a half-sob, half-whine.

Kaizuka’s lips leave a pleasantly stinging mark on his chin before he answers, a bit breathless, “Dealing with our longing for each other.”

“Huh? Huh?!”

No, in the end, life is something Slaine can’t comprehend.


End file.
